Russell Brakefield
Galileo’s Grocery List
See past the phallus
of this open organ pipe.
Press mortar to pestle
like fire to spoon, like the only prone
position is looking straight up,
up towards the heavens.
Fatherhood, a tacking ship, swells
three times through a gummed concave lens.
Separate beds, like dying stars, grow
further apart under closer inspection.
As cannonballs cost less than grinding stones, the kitchen’s secondary purpose
as weeping well means more to memory than to water.
Ink in one white silk dress—
the finest sand battered palms can hold.
In the absence of skin on skin, old shoulders shadowed
by newly pressed fabric brings even the coldest women to
a boiling point.
Hunger
Two times daily
we rub our
hands in grain.
I Want to Know About Anything the Way Al Green Knows About Love.
How to sew, to string together the cheeks
of some soft skin like, lets stay together.
How to be a man, man. How to be still, and still know
the world is a caught mouse
gummed by some fur slacked mouth. I want to know
about anything the way Al Green knows about love,
knows that the true beast needs the blood more
when it’s warm and new.
How to stand accused, but really
how come not being able to see your eyes
feels as though I've slowly peeled back
the swallow's wings until I have heard the hollow crack.
I want to know love like… or I want to know like like…
or no, I just really want to like anything about knowing love.
I want to know about anything
the way Al Green knows about love.
The reason for the angel’s dirty feet above the rooftops,
how to squeeze the slick rub of time, your eyes
or the pain slain dead aves, or a day's deep breath.
I want to know you against me
against the world if it must be. I want to know about anything
the way Al Green knows about love.